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Recommended taxi changes geared toward public safety

Iowa City Police Chief Sam Hargadine has made several recommendations to the city council to restructure the community’s taxicab ordinance with the hopes that proposed changes will help expedite future police investigations.

Iowa City Police Chief Sam Hargadine has made several recommendations to the City Council to restructure the community’s taxicab ordinance with the hopes that proposed changes will help expedite future police investigations.

He said proposed changes also would put more accountability on local taxicab companies and increase safety for drivers and customers.

“All of these recommendations were made with public safety in mind,” Hargadine said. “We’ve got a few companies in town that do it perfectly; they’re a model of how cab companies should be run, but it’s not that same way across that entire gamut of taxis in Iowa City. We’re trying t make it a little more uniform.”

During a recent sexual assault investigation, police spent more than 200 hours in one week tracking down the possible drivers of one taxicab company because the company’s owner was unable to provide the police with a timely list of drivers and vehicles, according to Hargadine’s recommendation letter.

Police investigations involving taxicabs can vary, from last year’s sexual assaults allegedly carried out by a cab driver to burglaries, thefts and robberies where the taxi is involved at some point during the course of events or the cab driver is the victim.

“When the investigating officer contacts a company, it can be extremely difficult, if at all possible, to determine who had been working at the time the incident occurred and/or what vehicle was involved,” according to the letter.

Hargadine recommends that all area companies hire drivers as employees, rather than as independent contractors who pay fees to the company owner in exchange for using the company name on privately owned vehicles, which is common in Iowa City, and that any company operating a taxicab business owns all the vehicles operating as taxicabs.

The changes would not only result in better records on area cab companies and their drivers, but would ensure all drivers are made eligible for company benefits, Hargadine wrote.

According to the Iowa City website, more than 90 cabs are registered in Iowa City among 10 companies. However, City Clerk Marian Karr said the number of cabs will climb significantly in the coming weeks with the approach of football season and cooler weather.

Hargadine also recommends that all companies dispatch from an accessible office at all times to further speed up the process when officers need to contact a specific driver.

Lindsey Hudson, driver and dispatcher with Number One Cab, said she agrees with most of the recommendations being made, which are geared toward added safety among drivers and their customers.

“As a whole, for safety measures, for everyone involved it’s definitely a good idea,” Hudson said of recommendations such as requiring area companies to keep better tabs on their drivers.

However, Hudson was less supportive of another recommendation that aims to eliminate the option for area taxicab companies to hire drivers on independent contracts, with hopes of transitioning all drivers over to paid employees.

Hudson’s fear is such a move would drop the pay for independent drivers such as herself down to a minimum wage level.

“Personally, I think it’s ridiculous,” she said. “I think a lot of our smaller taxi companies would go out of business.”

Hargadine said in the letter that transitioning drivers over to employees would not only force companies to keep better tabs on who is driving for them, but also provide added employment benefits for drivers such as workman’s compensation.

Mark Paterno, co-owner of Marco’s Taxi Co., said his company transitioned several years ago over to adhere to all the recommendations being suggested by Hargadine.

“There’s always some growing pains or transitional pains in general,” Paterno said of the changes made. “It worked out well for us, being able to exert the control that we need to operate a company but also to comply with everything that the city wants as well.”

Other recommendations listed in the letter include having the city issue photo identification cards for all drivers to maintain a comprehensive database on drivers, require unique color schemes for each company for better identification and having all drivers sign a receipt that they received a packet containing the city’s new taxicab ordinances.

Admittedly, the restructuring would take time and resources to implement, and Hargadine said in the letter that the hope is such changes would be phased in to reduce the burden on taxicab companies.

“The intention is not to create hardships for owners and drivers, but rather to provide the greatest level of safety that can be offered to our community,” Hargadine wrote in the letter.

With any taxicab operating in Iowa City likely to take fares to Coralville or North Liberty, other communities have been in discussion on potentially looking into similar ordinance recommendations, Hargadine said.

Coralville Police Chief Barry Bedford said nothing has been decided at this point, but added that there would be value to have similar requirements across different city lines.

“I think on some of these issues that do literally cross boundaries, we want to make it easier for the officers, the drivers and the taxi companies,” he said. “It’s a balancing act and a work in progress.”